


Swallowed and Colourless

by strangefrontier



Category: Fight Club
Genre: Blow Jobs, M/M, Violence, Yuletide, author confesses she hadn't actually read any Palahniuk before writing this, challenge:Yuletide 2008, sordid bathroom encounter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangefrontier/pseuds/strangefrontier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This guy, he's leaving. Giving up wage-slips and company letterheads to climb mountains in Nepal or Nicaragua or maybe fucking Nebraska. Live in a yurt. Be a close personal friend of nature. Assume a way of life so ancient and primitive it pre-dates even home shopping and VCRs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swallowed and Colourless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Derek Des Anges](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Derek+Des+Anges).



 

 

I don't even know his name. Joe. Jerry. Something like that. Another blank face, throttled by a striped designer tie and blinded by fluorescent strip lighting and monitor glare. He works down the hall in the domain of Jeanine, the secretary with best legs in the building. Our secretary doesn't have legs, just lumpy pillars holding her up like a vast, melting statue, her bulges always sliding slowly downwards. This guy, he's leaving.

Giving up wage-slips and company letterheads to climb mountains in Nepal or Nicaragua or maybe fucking Nebraska. Live in a yurt. Be a close personal friend of nature. Assume a way of life so ancient and primitive it pre-dates even home shopping and VCRs. Throwing away the mindlessly comforting continuity of off-white sweat-stained collar America, and for what? The idea of control? This guy's not in control of his life. He shut his eyes and stuck a pin in an atlas and now he's buying the biggest Louis Vuitton suitcase to pack himself into before flying off to a creased childhood postcard. He's not in control of his dick, either.

The brown envelope that's being passed around for the collection has a photo of him stapled to it. Snapshot from the office Christmas party, dribbling smile and cleavage-hunting eyes, plastic cup of neat vodka. I flip up the photo; his name's scribbled on the back. Jim. He doesn't look like a Jim. Guys called Jim are optimistic. They're genuine, they shake hands with no motives. This Jim is concerned about employees using the photocopier for personal items. He has creases ironed into his underpants and he stares dully at his wedding ring when you suck him off like it's meaningless, ugly jewellery he slipped on the wrong finger.

Jim. He was leaning on the sink in the men's bathroom, not inspecting his reflection but immobilised in that pose. Forgotten what he meant to do next. I walked in, took a piss, and he was still standing there, still unmoving.

"Hey," I tried. To be polite. He refocussed on my reflection. All I could see in him was a vacant lot, disused and dusty. A sudden jolt of anger and I wanted to punch him, to beat him for leaving this stupid shell lumbering around among the living. I wanted to batter my fists into his face again and again and again until my knuckles were raw from impacting with his flesh, blood streaking his shirt and dripping from his mashed nose, his split, puffy cheeks. An eye half-closed by swelling red tissue. Cracked tooth showing through lips imprinted with a bite-mark pattern, saliva and blood mingling, bubbling with each ragged breath. His tongue would poke out, probing the lacerations round his mouth. Salty, metallic.

 _There. There,_ I'd say. _There's your fucking life. Now do you realise you're alive?_ All this in an instant when our eyes met in the mirror. I reached out a hand to his shoulder, shifting him round to face me. Drawing my arm back, I truly believed I was about to thrash him just to get see kind of human expression on that face. But my fist unclenched and I knelt and I yanked his belt undone, unzipped him, exposed him. Burying my face in his crotch I inhaled deeply but caught no musk over the dry, dead scent of office air, recycled through a faulty conditioner, and the cheap bleach used by the morning cleaners.

I took his dick in my mouth, aware that at any moment someone else could walk in. My tongue traced the veins, the contours. He fucked my mouth roughly and silently, and as I flicked my eyes upward I saw his gaze directed at his left hand. The ring glinted as he lifted his hand to wipe the fine sheen of sweat from above his upper lip. He closed his eyes. I sped up.

It was quick. He had stiffened easily and he came swiftly, into the back of my throat, soundlessly. Proof. Proof of life, but it was gone, swallowed, and colourless. I didn't even leave a bruise where I'd gripped his hips.

Maybe I should have punched him afterwards. I consider a rehash of our previous encounter, a better way to say goodbye to someone you don't know and don't give a shit about than donating towards a generic gift that says nothing about him or the people who bought it except that we see credit card limits as the measure of a human soul. I consider it, but I can just imagine Tyler's response, his laughter, and I decide that I can't.

I stick three blood-stained dollar bills in the envelope and pass it on. 

 


End file.
